Hope
A talk by Sri Chinmoy
in Honolulu, Hawaii
Hope is at once both simple and profound. It is hope that binds Heaven and earth. Hope is the bridge between Heaven and earth. It is hope that makes us feel, at the beginning of our spiritual journey, that we are of God and that we are for God.
God wants to manifest Himself in and through us. We hope to realise God so that we can liberate ourselves from the meshes of ignorance. God hopes to make us His perfect instruments. We hope to please God eventually in God’s own Way.
You will say that because of life, there is hope. You are right. But I wish to add something. Because there is hope, we live eternally — in the inner world, in the outer world, or in both worlds. You will say that hope sees illumining light in teeming darkness. You are perfectly right. But I wish to add something. Hope is itself the light that illumines darkness.
I love hope. I may not love God, but in the inmost recesses of my being, in the inmost recesses of my heart, I feel that God loves me. Whether I love God or not, God loves me: This is my fervent hope. I may not care for God, but I do feel in all sincerity that God cares for me. Whether I care for God or not, God cares for me: This is my fervent hope.
There is human hope and divine hope. Human hope is desire-bound; divine hope is aspiration-free. Desire-bound and earth-bound are one and identical. Aspiration-free and Heaven-free are one and the same. Human hope inspires us and energises us. Hope divine awakens in us not only infinite possibilities but also immortal realities.
Human hope inspires our outer journey. Hope divine aspires in and through our inner journey. Our outer journey takes us to name and fame, but name and fame will eventually lead to utter frustration. But in the divine world, in the aspiration-world, at the end of our inner journey’s close we see, we feel and we grow into illumination.
When we aspire, we come to realise that hope is a hand, beautiful and powerful, beckoning us for our psychic transformation. When we aspire, we see and feel that hope is the perfect beginning of our God-realisation. When we do not aspire, hope appears before us in a different way. We feel that perhaps it is all mental hallucination; perhaps it is all deception.
Each individual here on earth, whether he is aspiring or not, cannot escape from hope. But hope itself is not an escape. Hope unites us with a higher reality which illumines and fulfils us.
The world is a body. An ordinary human being is not satisfied with the body-consciousness that he has and that he is. He wants to see the body of the future. He wants to see the body-consciousness of the future. If he can see the possibilities, potentialities, realities and inevitabilities of the future, then only will he be happy. But a sincere seeker is not interested in seeing the distant or remote future. He feels that this world is an eternal
Now. By virtue of his convincing inner hope, he wants to see, feel and grow into the eternal Now.
Perhaps some of you know that I serve the United Nations. We have a group at the United Nations which meets twice a week to pray and meditate for peace. What we call the United Nations was once upon a time known as the League of Nations. The League of Nations was the vision of Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson was a man of supreme vision. He wanted to unite all the nations. Each nation is composed of human beings and divine souls. By unifying the souls of all the nations, he envisioned that world peace would come into existence.
At the United Nations there are representatives from every corner of the world. They have come with sincere hope that a day will dawn when all the world’s calamities and misunderstandings will come to an end, and mankind will be united as one family. Is this not a hope? It is. But inside this hope, possibility looms large. And inside this possibility, what is looming large is inevitability.
The world is still millions of miles away from world peace. But just because we do not see the reality all at once, that is no reason to become discouraged. Before the day dawns, it is dark. When we look at the darkness that is all around and identify with the darkness, it is almost impossible for us to have faith in light. But at the end of the tunnel there is light. At the end of the darkness there is light. This light that we talk about is not a mental hallucination or deception. This light is our psychic light, our soul’s light deep within us, and it is all the time trying desperately to come to the fore. It is more than eager to come to the fore to liberate us, illumine us and perfect us. It is like a child and the mother. The mother is always trying inwardly and outwardly to make the child perfect. Similarly, our inner light is trying to free our outer existence from ignorance-night.
So, at the United Nations, representatives from many, many parts of the world are gathered together. They have come there for world-unity, but world-unity seems to be a far cry. Yet they still have the inner hope that some day there will be world-unity. Right now the countries of the world misunderstand each other, and some of them are undivine, to say the least. But deep within them there is an inner urge. Each nation has an inner urge to have peace, to have light, to have oneness. Each nation hopes to someday have peace, light and oneness. Peace, light and oneness will definitely come into the world arena precisely because each nation is inundated with hope. This hope of today will be transformed into the abiding satisfaction of tomorrow only when we believe in hope, grow into hope, and breathe in at every moment the fragrance and the beauty of hope.
Published in AUM – Vol. 6, No. 5, May 1980
Questions and Answers
following the talk
Question: What is the difference between aspiration and desire?
Sri Chinmoy: When we desire, we try to increase our capacities in order to challenge others, in order to defeat others, in order to lord it over others, and in order to make the world feel that we are a few inches — if not a few miles — ahead of it. Desire wants to say, like Julius Caesar: “Veni, vidi, vici — I came, I saw, I conquered.” I came into your domain, I saw you and I conquered you.
Aspiration is not like that. When we aspire, we cry not only for our own perfection but also for others’ perfection. Aspiration will say, “What I have, I wish to share with you. If I have a good thought, I wish to share it with you. Again, if you have a good thought, I wish you to share it with me. Let us share our capacities and our realities with each other.” Aspiration plays the role of oneness, which is nothing other than perfection itself. Oneness is perfection; perfection is oneness.
Desire enjoys the sense of separativity: “You stay where you are, I will stay where I am, and I will try to show you that I am infinitely more powerful than you, infinitely superior to you. In every aspect of life I will show you that I far surpass you.” This is the message of desire. But aspiration will say, “If I have anything good, I will share it with you. If I have beauty, I will give it to you. If I have power, I will give it to you, because I am always eager to sing the song of oneness.”
Aspiration is always trying to establish its oneness with each and every individual, and to see only the good, divine, supreme qualities that each individual has and is. If aspiration discovers that I have an unlit quality or capacity, it will try to illumine it. It will never give it to you. My difficulties and imperfections, aspiration will not hide. It will try to illumine them, but it will never offer them to you. When I am aspiring, I will pray to God, my Heavenly Father, to inundate me with light so that I can illumine my imperfections, limitations and undivine qualities.
Desire, on the other hand, secretly or openly will try to throw into you only bad qualities. If I have any wrong thoughts or wrong ideas, if I have anything that is undivine and destructive, openly I can’t give these things to you. But secretly my desire will try to inject them into you so that you will also bear the burden and suffer, so that you will carry the heaviest possible load and not be able to surpass me in any way.
Desire binds us; aspiration liberates us. Desire wants to lord it over others. Aspiration always wants to be one with others. Each time desire achieves its goal, another goal looms ahead; so desire is never satisfied. First it wants one house, then two houses, then three houses, and at the end of the road, frustration looms large. But when we aspire, even if we get just an iota of light, we are satisfied, for we know that eventually we will be inundated with the infinite ocean of Light. Right now we are wanting in receptivity. Once we get more receptivity and our inner vessel becomes large, larger, largest, at that time we shall definitely see and grow into infinite Peace, Light and Bliss. These are not mere words or ideas; these are realities that will one day be at our disposal.
Question: How can we be more attached to pleasing God?
Sri Chinmoy: Instead of saying ‘attached’, let us say devoted. When something is good, we are devoted to it; when something is undivine, we are attached to it. Because we love our country, we devote our lives to the improvement of our country. If anything is good, we will devote our lives to that thing. Our soul is devoted to God-manifestation. When we start praying and meditating, we try to satisfy God. That means we are devoted to a high cause, the supreme Cause.
When we remain in the ordinary world, the unaspiring world, the desire-world, we try to please and satisfy only ourselves. But when we are in the aspiration-world, we try to please God. God is the root, and if we can please the root, then the trunk, branches, leaves, flowers and fruits will also be pleased. So let us devote ourselves to the root, to God. If we can please God on the strength of our heart’s inner cry, then we will see and feel inside us God’s Love, Concern, Light and Peace — all that God has and is.
How can we have this inner cry? We can have this inner cry in the same way that we can have the outer cry. When the child cries for food, no matter where the mother is, she will come running. The child may be on the first floor and the mother may be on the fourth floor, but the mother will come running because the child is sincerely crying to be fed. Similarly, if we cry sincerely for divine Nectar, for light and delight, then God is bound to give it to us.
When the child cries, he has the unconscious hope that the mother will come and bring him food. But in the case of seekers, we are conscious. So when we cry for peace, light and bliss, immediately we get an answer. But our cry has to be sincere. When we cry inwardly, we have to feel a sincere need for God. When we have that inner need, then God, out of His infinite Bounty, will come and grant us the things that we need.
If we have a sincere, genuine inner cry, then all our problems will be solved. But if we do not have that sincere inner cry, then no matter how many years we live on earth, we will not find satisfaction, because true satisfaction means the perfection of our nature, the perfection of our life.
Question: I’m trying to have faith in all that you are saying. But if it is true, why don’t I feel these things inside me? Why don’t I feel light and peace inside?
Sri Chinmoy: If something is true, you will feel it within the very depths of your heart. That is true. But sometimes it may take a little time. You sow a seed. After a few months it germinates. In a year it grows into a sapling, and eventually it grows into a huge banyan tree. Similarly, when you begin to take an interest in the spiritual life, you have sown the seed. You may not see the results immediately. It takes time.
You will feel, but first you have to have faith. Inside you there are many organs: heart, lungs and so on. You believe this because doctors and others say so. Although you cannot see these things, you know that they are there. Similarly, within your inner body, let us say, there are many things which you may not feel, but which I am aware of, because I have prayed and meditated more than you have. In the spiritual life you have to pray and meditate soulfully, and have faith in what you have heard from spiritual seekers and Masters. Eventually, if you apply yourself to the inner discipline, you will see that they were right. Again, there are many things which you may know better than I do. In these matters I have to have faith in you. Then eventually, if I seriously study these things, I will see for myself that what you say is true.
In the inner world if you do not see something right now, you cannot say that it does not exist. I am not saying that you are doubting or arguing; far from it. But I wish you to cultivate more faith in what I say and in what other Masters have said about the inner world. You have to start with faith — sincere, genuine, sublime faith. This faith is not going to betray you. You read spiritual books, scriptures. Each book embodies light. While reading, you may not feel light inside the book. But you do not discard the book. No, you have faith in the messages that the book contains. You meditate on the words and ideas that the book embodies, and eventually you do get light. Inside the ink, inside the paper, inside the book there was a hidden reality. You believed in that hidden reality while you were reading, and in the course of time you got illumination. But you had to read the book to get the essence, the quintessence, of the book.
Similarly, you have to pray and meditate before you will feel your own divinity. If you cannot feel your inner divinity right now, don’t be sad or upset. It takes time. Pray and meditate sincerely, and through your faith your real divinity will one day loom large. Once you enter into the spiritual life, if you do not have higher experiences or realisations, do not give up. If you do not feel inside the very depth of your heart something divine, illumining, fulfilling and perfect, no harm. It takes time to acquire a free access to the inner world, but once you have it, you will see that it is flooded with light and delight.
Published in AUM – Vol. 6, No. 5, May 1980
